


Read a Treasured Dream

by mebfeath



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: F/M, I'm so sorry, Please Forgive me, So many emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 11:47:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11920248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mebfeath/pseuds/mebfeath
Summary: But this most recent letter? Oh, it reminded him of wide blue eyes and youthful naïveté and everything he’d loved about his role as Prime Minister. He smiles down at the page in front of him, filled with her softly looping letters and thoughts, and wonders why, all of a sudden, she should speak with such beautiful, youthful enthusiasm.





	Read a Treasured Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, I'm sorry.
> 
> Secondly, I'm really sorry.
> 
> Thirdly, don't read Leslie George Mitchell's description of the last months of Melbourne's life because it'll absolutely break your heart.
> 
> Fourthly, the title comes from David Bowie's song _Letter to Hermione_. Thanks to Lord M himself, Mr Rufus Sewell, for the recommendation.
> 
> Fifthly, I'd appreciate it if you forgave me. Go and read one of my other happier stories. Or hug a kitten or something.
> 
> UPDATE: So, it became rather clear that I hadn't quite succeeded in doing what I had set out to achieve. I kinda knew, I think, but I hoped it had been enough. Since I really shouldn't take it down and re-write it, I've taken the suggestion of a lovely human and added some lyrics to a song at the start of the story to hopefully give more of a hint. Let me know if you think it works...

She visits me  
She visits me  
From the corners of the past  
She won't let go of my spirit here  
She comes she comes to haunt me  
She comes, to visit me

\- Vast, _She Visits Me_

 

 

 

It hits him when he’s walking through the entranceway of his house. He’s felt a bit off all day, a little outside of himself somehow. Tired. He blinks and pauses as the room begins to darken and then he feels himself falling.

 

***

 

She starts writing to him again, and it’s his lifeblood, now that he's not able to leave the house. But her letters strike him as different to her last, and he goes to his shelf and pulls out a box, leafing through the papers lying inside until he finds what he’s looking for. He grabs the nearly ten-year-old letter, and returns to his desk, reading while he walks.

He feels the smile spread across his face as he reads her words; she had been so young, so impulsive, so sweet, this young Queen he’d tutored. He’d been overwhelmed by her youth and her vibrancy, her desperate desire to do well, to throw off the shackles of her childhood and become a great Queen. But he’d been mostly overwhelmed by her love for him, her Prime Minister and friend.

Her words to him back then had been the words of a very young inexperienced girl-Queen; they’d slowly grown and changed until one day he’d realised he was reading the words of a woman, a strong and beautiful Queen who knew her mind.

But this most recent letter? Oh, it reminded him of wide blue eyes and youthful naïveté and everything he’d loved about his role as Prime Minister.

He smiles down at the page in front of him, filled with her softly looping letters and thoughts, and wonders why, all of a sudden, she should speak with such beautiful, youthful enthusiasm.

 

***

 

He’s feeding the rooks when she comes for the first time in such a long time. It’s fitting, he thinks, that she should choose to visit then, eight years to the day since she had first appeared from behind the trees, so young and beautiful and in love.

It would seem that she’s come to remind him of those days, his days in the sun.

He knows she’s been struggling; she doesn’t enjoy being pregnant, but her children are gifts from heaven for his weary heart. She tells him stories in her letters of the young princes and princesses, and he knows that if he met the younger Victoria now, she would be a vision of her mother in childhood.

In his quiet moments, when his mind goes to that dark place, he thinks of a young boy with soft brown curls and green eyes and his bitter heart is so glad that she has not suffered in the same way. He would give anything, do anything to keep her safe.

Her letters are full of happy stories; of state dinners, amusing anecdotes from court, Dash's most recently devoured shoe, and Lady Peel's attempts to atone for her husband's lack of social graces. He notices that she never mentions Albert in her letters anymore. She hadn’t really discussed him much in the first place, but it’s like the Prince doesn’t exist now, and he thinks she must be doing it for him. The alternative is distinctly unpalatable to him. He knows what it is to be chained to someone who has become a stranger, and it aches that he cannot protect her from such a fate. 

But she’s alone, and here with him, and so beautiful that he can’t breathe.

‘Did you know that rooks mate for life?’ he hears her whisper at his side eventually, and he blinks away tears.

 

***

 

To say he was surprised when she burst in one afternoon while he was writing would be an understatement.

‘Your Majesty!’ he chides as he jumps to his feet. She says nothing, and he takes in her amused eyes and small smile, and lets his hands drop to his sides. ‘I thought perhaps we were beyond this, ma’am,’ he says with raised eyebrow after a moment, but he knows the frustration in his voice is obscured by the amusement he feels at her tenacity. It would seem that she refuses to learn, this Queen he’s spent so long tutoring.

He chuckles when she laughs at him, waving away Jenkins who had suddenly appeared at the door, before escorting her to the chair that was now hers at the back of his library to hear all about why she had come.

 

 ***

 

He’s tending to her orchids when she visits again. He is not what he used to be – or, at least, his body isn’t. He finds he cannot bend as well, and his arm just won’t obey him some days.

Today is one of those days, and he lets out a huff of frustration.

But then a small, soft hand reaches out and silently takes the bag from his hands, and he turns to see her smiling gently at him. His heart swells in his chest, and she looks away after a moment, reaching into the bag and sprinkling some of its contents on to the flowers in front of her. He thinks after a moment that it’s both fitting and unfair that she should tend the flowers he grows only for her, but he is not going to stop her.

When Johns appears a few moments later and asks if he would like some assistance, he frowns at the young gardener’s lack of greeting to his Queen. But before he can speak, her hand is on his arm and she’s shaking her head, and he realises that she has come incognito again, and he shakes his head amusedly at her. He thinks she’s spurred on by her success; no one had given any indication that she had even appeared after her last impromptu visit, apart from Jenkins’s strange stares later that evening after her departure. He’s fairly sure that someone – Albert, Leopold, even Emma – would have said _something_ if they’d found out. He remembers an awkward conversation in a ballroom with the King of Belgium, and grimaces slightly. But then she’s married now, and in no danger from him, so he supposes there is little point in their trying to stop her.

So he waves a clearly confused Johns away, moving to hide her with his body as best he can, and he has to work hard not to smile when he hears her giggle behind him.

They spend a wonderful afternoon tending to his flowers and talking about everything and nothing, and he loses track of how many times she disappears only to reappear with a cheeky smile after one of his servants has ascertained that he is quite happily tending to his flowers alone and doesn't require assistance. He has all the assistance he could ever need in her, but he can't tell them that. When she leaves, she presses a soft kiss to his cheek, and the fragrance from the gardenia she’d pushed behind her ear makes his heart ache.

He’s so grateful for her visits, his young, beautiful Queen.

He misses her so when she’s gone.

 

***

 

She comes to him, near what he knows must be the end. He’s horrified that she should see him like this, lying in his bed, unable to do anything much but lie there, propped up on pillows.

He can’t even greet her.

But she smiles at him so, so sweetly, reaching out to stroke the backs of her warm fingers across his brow, and despite his tears his heart is full.

She sits on the chair next to his bed, opens the book she’d brought, and, taking his old, wrinkled hand in her small warm one, reads to him. Her words are soft but still full of that vibrant elegance that now characterised her reign, and he falls asleep to the sound of her voice and the soft warmth of her skin.

She's gone when he wakes, but he doesn't mind.

She _came_.

 

***

 

When he sees her face from his pillows, he knows that this is the last time he’ll see her.

Her visits have sustained him over the past years of pain and loneliness, and he will always be grateful that his beautiful Queen would take the time to visit him, her former Prime Minister and friend.

She beckons him now, reaches down and takes his hand in her tiny little one, and gently pulls. He wants to protest, tell her that he can’t get up, that he’s too old and his legs don’t work anymore, but he finds that with her help, he can. She smiles so broadly at him, and he can’t help but smile in return as she pulls him towards her. Her smile turns coy as she pulls his arm out to the side, her hand never leaving his, and slides her other hand up to his shoulder.

And even though there’s no music, even though there’s nothing but him and her, he more than happily grants her that waltz she had asked for a lifetime ago.

She looks up at him with her wide blue eyes for a moment, her face so sure and confident and happy, and he stops moving just so he can focus on the soft glow of her face. He feels her hand slide from his shoulder to his cheek, and then she’s moving upwards and pulling him down to her and he’s powerless to stop. When their lips meet in the softest, sweetest kiss, he feels tears well behind his eyelids. It’s so right and so perfect and he is so, so happy.

And when she pulls away and wraps her arms around him, pressing her cheek to his chest and gently swaying again, he finds that he can only wrap his arms around her tiny, soft shoulders and hold her close to him like he’s longed to do his entire life. She’s so warm and soft and beautiful and he thinks his heart is going to burst in his chest.

Oh, he loves her so, and she is here with him now at what he knows is the end.

He presses a soft kiss to her hair before laying his cheek against the top of her head, and they sway like that for what feels like forever. 

**Author's Note:**

> Bet you didn't cry reading it as much as I did writing it.


End file.
